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Wednesday, 5 February 2014

Carriers

An apocalyptic tale of a flesh-dissolving
virus that has plagued the United States and now has left civilization to turn
on each other. Two brothers Brain (Chris
Pine) and Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci) and their girlfriends head on a post-apocalyptic road trip to
the coast through a barren world of corpses. As the viral pandemic sweeps
through the country, they soon realise that their
companionship comes to question when they have to decide how far will they go to survive the
epidemic chaos. Written and directed by David Pastor and Àlex Pastor, Carriers (2009) shows how driving
through the empty post-apocalyptic freeways with your family, buddies or partners
may seem ideal, but will soon discover that the your sibling next to you and
your partner behind may be far more dangerous than any airborne pathogen. Do you
have what it takes to have the pressure of making the difficult decisions in
order to keep everyone alive or worse, do you have the courage to do what must
be done if your sibling or partner get infected.

The four
survivors reach the deserted roads, far away from major cities and from possibly
infected individuals. The group make a desperate attempt to head to a safe
haven where they can wait for the viral pandemic to die out. However, an unexpected
detour takes the group to one grisly encounter to another, with dwindling
supplies and running low on fuel. The group soon realise that in world
where law and order is in utter disarray no one will help them. Anyone can be a
threat from suspicious travellers, military personnel gone rouge to gun
wielding militias. Carriers presents
a very bleak future of how helpless civilisation can be when airborne pandemic
plagues the planet and showing he realistic perception of what humanity will do
during the outbreak and aftermath.

With the airborne lethal sickness a constant threat, the real unpleasant truth is that breaking down or petrol
shortages on the road mean dealing with other possibly-infected strangers. These
moments not only give such visceral thrills and suspense, but it makes you
question your own moral choices. With that in your thoughts you are constantly
left with a moral ambiguity, which I feel is a fantastic element to the film.
However, the choices the characters make doesn't really seem to have much of an impact and the detours they make lead to nothing. This all makes it just pointless, so the effective motor of suspense begins to lose power sadly.

Carriers is still a very decent post-apocalyptic horror with a brilliant unique touch of a road movie as its core theme. However John Hillcoat’s The Road starring Viggo Mortensen's very much identical film was released the same year but Mortensen's The Road is a far superior film and highly praised by critics. This is possibly the reason why Carriers went so far under the radar. However, if you're a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre Carriers is a well-crafted and thrillingly gripping horror with characters plagued by moral uncertainty.